Video
esiegel | February 20, 2008I was driving home from work at about 6:30 today and noticed the Moon, still orange, hanging low on the horizon. The lower left corner was just starting to be shadowed by the Earth. As it rose a little higher, it turned yellow and then white, as we learned it should.
Then we got clouded out, and right now, during totality, the entire sky is covered in clouds. But I started thinking, "What if I were in space?" Well, the Moon appears red/orange every day during Moonrise/Moonset from Earth, but would appear white from space. But the red/orange during a total eclipse? The Moon would still…
bleimanb | February 19, 2008Check out this footage from a recent international expedition called the Collaborative East Antarctic Marine Census. Their mission is part of an effort to take stock of all the life in the world's ocean, but these creatures were filmed in the Antarctic Ocean (Southern Ocean). The bulbous, plantlike structures are called tunicates.
zooillogix | February 18, 2008Fascinating BBC footage of geckos coaxing leafhoppers to feed them honeydew. The lizards tap their feet or bob their heads, and the insect dutifully tosses them a bead of delicious tree sap. This definitely qualifies as bizarre zoology.
esiegel | February 17, 2008Alright, folks, so last week I got this letter from a very good magician and television producer Anthony Owen from Objective Productions, the company partnered with Discovery Channel to make Dangerman in London:
Thank you for your recent email application for Dangerman.
If you are still interested in being considered for this role weâd like you to make a short video of yourself (no longer than 3 minutes). Tell us, on camera, why you would be the perfect Dangerman (or Woman) and explain the science behind a dangerous stunt in an entertaining way which would make sense to a non science-…
esiegel | February 16, 2008So I am preparing an audition video to be Dangerman this weekend, which will go up on youtube and get posted here next week. In the meantime, as promised for the weekend, I have a new weekend diversion for you: the archer fish, a.k.a. toxotes jaculatrix (hee hee). But what makes it so cool? Oh, I don't know, how about this slow-motion video:
Did you see that?? It's a fish that hunts insects by shooting them with water, and then eating them when they fall into the water, often catching them before they ever leave the air! What's really amazing about this is that the fish needs to be able to "…
bleimanb | February 14, 2008Anyone who knows Andrew and me is aware that we have a deep love of only two things in this godforsaken world, animals and beer. Now, some genius Englishman has combined the two with a scallop-infused beer!!!
Mmmm...bi-valvo-licious!
Scallop Stout has been created by a brewery named Shepherd Neame, apparently the oldest brewery in England. They make the beer the same way they always would, but throw a handful of scallops into the vat for an hour. While Andrew and I are suspicious that he might have actually gotten the idea from God, the brewer Stewart Main claims to have thought it up…
esiegel | February 13, 2008Last week, Jamie (my significant other) came home from work and told me about a conversation she had with her coworker, Chris. This week she asked another one, Miguel, whether he had any questions about Astronomy, Physics, space, etc. This week's question comes from Miguel:
What is a galaxy, anyway? Why does it look like a big bright fuzzy star? And why are there different types of galaxies; shouldn't they all be the same?
This might come as a surprise, but 100 years ago, it was pretty much accepted that we were the only galaxy in the Universe. In fact, there was a great debate in 1920 on…
omnibrain | February 9, 2008To reduce the severity of his seizures, Joe had the bridge between his left and right cerebral hemispheres (the corpus callosum) severed. As a result, his left and right brains no longer communicate through that pathway. Here's what happens as a result:
bleimanb | February 5, 2008
Scientists have discovered two new species of animal recently, one in Tanzania and the other in Nepal. Though the researchers had spotted the giant, cat-sized shrew (Rhynchocyon udzungwensis) as far back as 2005 in Tanzania, they have now identified it as a new kind of giant sengi.
The findings were published in the Feb. 4 issue of the Journal of Zoology.
Meanwhile, in the wetlands of southern Nepal, scientists captured a new kind of warbler. It is a sub-species that seems to be the "missing link" between two other species of warbler...blah, blah, blah. Let's get back to the massive…
bleimanb | February 5, 2008These pictures were taken by the Predator while hunting at the London Zoo. Turns out the Predator's actual name is Steve Lowe! There's an article about it in the Telegraph.
The images show how different animals use their fur and feathers to regulate their body heat.
More below the fold...
greengabbro | February 2, 2008I vaguely knew that the U.S. Geological Survey's Menlo Park office runs a series of public lectures, but I didn't realize they were all videotaped and archived online for my blogging convenience. Ace! Now we just need to chop them up into bits and put them on YouTube.
Anyway, Thursday night's lecture was about the ongoing eruption of the Lusi mud volcano in Indonesia (which Chris has covered in the past). You can watch it here. It's a little long, but quite suitable to put on as background material for your weekend housecleaning. The good science bits start about 15 minutes in.
Now, I've got…
omnibrain | February 1, 2008Here's a wonderful spoof of .. well... I'm not really sure what. Perhaps an old Documentary focusing on the diseases of the mind? In any case it's terribly entertaining.
omnibrain | January 25, 2008If I only had a brain:
According to this highly intelligible comment from YouTube this song was featured on Beavis and Butthead - surprise surprise!
DaDrizzL31214 (2 weeks ago)
On Beavis and Butthead, they were waatching this vid and Beavis started going with the tune for the whole song. He wouldn't shut the hell up even after Butthead smacked him upside his head a couple of times. Lol then Butthead started doing the same at the end. XD
esiegel | January 24, 2008Evolution, creationism, and intelligent design are words that many people have extremely strong opinions about. Regardless of how you feel about why the laws of nature are what they are, which have evidently allowed us to exist, the evidence for the validity of the theory of evolution with one major mechanism being natural selection is absolutely overwhelming. That said, this is often very hard to communicate to people, especially those with strong biases against what they perceive as the implications of evolution, how evolution works, and why the case for it is so compelling.
Thankfully,…
omnibrain | January 18, 2008Don't play any of the embedded videos if you've ever had a seizure.
Now that we're done with the warning...
We've all heard of the Pokemon incident in Japan where nearly 700 school aged children were admitted to the hospital with "convulsions, vomiting, irritated eyes and other symptoms" common to epilepsy. This lead to a number of government investigations and media companies searching their offerings to determine whether any of their shows had similar scenes that might induce photosensitive epilepsy. According to a CNN report of the incidents:
Dr. Yukio Fukuyama, a juvenile epilepsy…
esiegel | January 17, 2008In preparation for the launch of startswithabang.com, I am attempting to embed a video I had found on youtube, of the slow-motion ignition of a lighter.
How does this work? The video demonstrates that to make something very simple happen (to get a sustained, controlled flame out of a compact piece of equipment), a lot of thought needs to go into how it's made, and what each step is going to accomplish. A lighter works by the following:
Flint and steel rub together (that's turning the wheel) to create very high temperatures along the metal shavings, which fly off in many directions.
The…
zooillogix | January 14, 2008 Dr. Emily Rayfield, a researcher at the University of Bristol has pioneered methods using computer modeling to determine dinosaur physiology. Research by Dr. Rayfield just published in the Journal of Vertebrate Palaeontolology sheds new light on the feeding habits of Baryonyx, which had a body similar to meat eating dinosaurs but now appears to have been better adapted for eating fish.
Fascinating footage of a Baryonyx skull spinning around in circles, apparently proving something important.
Using a CT scan, Dr. Rayfield was able to determine that Baryonyx's skull bent and stretched more…
zooillogix | January 14, 2008This sexy mussel is burning up the web right now. Totally free and posing just for you, watch in real-time as this flirty bivalve does its thing.
Riveting live feed courtesy of Flex Mussels restaurant on Prince Edward Island.